I am a little sad to say that this was the third and final week of our farm unit. We've had so much fun with this theme and could have spent a lot more time on it, however, we are all looking forward to jumping into full-gear Halloween mode next week! We enjoyed our final hurrah of "Around the Farm" activities, saving the best for last - farm animal fun!!
Arts and Crafts
Muddy Pig Painting - The girls had fun painting their little piggies with our homemade mud mixture
Mud Recipe:
Brown Tempera
Oatmeal
Coffee Grounds
The mixture looked and felt just like mud. The girls were welcome to use their fingers but chose to apply their mud with sticks, much to my surprise!
Rorschach Cow Painting - E and J LOVED making ink blot designs! They used eye droppers to squirt drops of black tempera onto one side of their white paper. They were so excited to see that the neat designs were on both sides of their paper after they folded it in half and opened it back up! They even learned a new vocabulary word - symmetrical. This activity was also great for fine motor control and strengthening hand muscles needed for writing!!
The girls loved this so much that they each made about 15 ink blot designs! After they dried I cut them into the shape of a cow face and they glued on ears, horns, eyes, and a nose to make a cute little cow craft. I always love when great process oriented art can be made into a cute product!
Paper Bag Scare Crows - For a fun and simple craft, the girls glued shapes onto a brown paper bag, and drew a mouth to make a scare crow face. They stuffed their bags with grocery sacs (because that's what I had on hand. Newspaper would work great too) and then glued on paper Easter grass for hair.
Later on, I stuffed some toddler sized jammies with rags and pillows and to make a body. I set out a big pile of clothes and accessories for the girls to rifle through. They had a blast dressing (and re-dressing, and re-dressing...) their scare crows. E has developed quite a little attachment to hers. She danced around the house and even insisted on sleeping with it one night :)
R is for Rooster Craft - We created our own version of this adorable rooster craft from
Totally Tots. The girls started by painting our letter r's brown and letting them dry. Their favorite part was helping mix all the colors together to make the brown paint!
The next day the girls glued rooster parts on their r to decorate it.
Nature and Science
Milking a Cow - The girls had a lot of fun pretending to milk a cow in this classic milking a cow activity. We used watered down white tempera rather than real milk and poured it into a rubber glove with small holes poked in the finger tips. It was a little trickier than I anticipated but the girls quickly got the hang of it. It was also a little messier than I expected. I would recommend only poking one hole in one finger tip, rather than several holes in each finger tip like I did. I started off with only one hole but it wasn't coming out well so I poked more holes - not a good idea. I think we just hadn't figured out the the proper squeezing technique at first and one hole would have worked fine if we had tried harder. Never the less, it was still lots of fun!
Hatching Egg Observation - Oh how I would love to have an egg incubator for the kids to observe first hand! Sadly we do not have the means to do that, but we were able to use the power of technology to enjoy the next best thing, a video of eggs hatching!
The girls, especially J, loved this video so much, and were rooting for the little chick to hatch right along with the kiddos in the video!
Raising Caterpillars - Although this activity was neither planned, nor farm related, it was the highlight of our week and deserves to be mentioned. E spotted a cute little caterpillar creeping across the sidewalk on our afternoon walk one day last week and insisted upon bringing it home so it would not be lonely :) The girls had so much fun collecting supplies to create a comfortable caterpillar habitat and they must have done a great job because our little friend immediately climbed to the top and began to make it's chrysalis / cocoon (not sure if its a moth or butterfly). We are anxiously awaiting the transformation!
Music and Movement
"I Know a Chicken" - I made some egg shakers and the kids had a blast "shakin' it" to Laurie Berkner's "I Know a Chicken" song. They loved this video which included some of our other favorite's as well.
"Walkin' Old Joe" - I don't know who sings this song. We just know it from our library story time. These are the lyrics.
Walkin' old Joe, Walkin' old Joe
You're the best horse in the country-o
Walkin' old Joe, Walkin' old Joe,
You're the best horse in the country, whoa...
Trottin' old Joe, Trottin' old Joe,
You're the best horse in the country-o,
Trottin' old Joe, Trottin' old Joe,
You're the best horse in the country, whoa...
Mosey old Joe, Mosey old Joe,
You're the best horse in the country-o,
Mosey old Joe, Mosey old Joe,
You're the best horse in the country, whoa...
Gallop old Joe, Gallop old Joe,
You're the best horse in the country-o
Gallop old Joe, Gallop old Joe,
You're the best horse in the country, woah...
Usually the song is sung patting your hands on your lap, but I made some quick and simple stick horses out of old socks, and wrapping paper tubes for the girls to ride around on as we sang. Lots of fun and got them moving!
Corral the Pigs Game - I found these cute little balloon piggies on
pintrest and directions for this fun party game on another website (can't remember where now) and combined them for a fun farm activity that was an absolute hit!
I used painters tape to create 3 squares on the floor, one big (the field) and two small (pig pens), one for each girl. All of the piggies started off in the field. Each girl was given a flyswatter (or spatula because one of our flyswatters went missing) and the object of the game was to see who could corral the most pigs into their pen using the flyswatter. At the end, we counted the piggies to see who "won", although the girls mostly worked together so we didn't really declare a winner :)
The piggies lingered around our house for the rest of the week and provided an endless source of entertainment for all 4 kiddos! They are just so darn cute!
Baby Play
Feed the Pig - A modified version of one of the girl's busy box activities L enjoyed taking the food coins out of the ice cube tray and carefully feeding them into the slot of this little piggy bank. This activity is great for fine motor control and hand eye coordination!
Mud Painting - The babies enjoyed this fun sensory art activity using baby-safe mud paint
Baby Mud Paint Recipe:
1/2 c Flour
1 Tbsp Cocoa Powder
Coffee Grounds
Water to desired consistency
This happened to be M's very first time joining us for art so I went a little crazy snapping photos! She loved it so much and I am so excited for her to be a regular participant!
M did take a few tastes, as expected, but very little was actually ingested so I wasn't too concerned about the caffeine. As a side note, my take on making baby paint is to make it edible, but not tasty. With little ones, paint is bound to go in the mouth, but I eventually want them to learn that paint is not for eating, so I try not to encourage it.
